MORGAN: Looking for milk in all the wrong places

Monday

Jan 20, 2014 at 3:00 AM

Mr. President, enough with the bull. I will explain later. You know many millions of American workers have dropped out of our work force because our new jobs machine has failed to produce enough jobs for them. For the past several years it has failed. In December it failed miserably. It produced about 74,000 new jobs. The economy needs about 250,000 new jobs per month, minimum.

TOM MORGAN

Mr. President, enough with the bull. I will explain later. You know many millions of American workers have dropped out of our work force because our new jobs machine has failed to produce enough jobs for them. For the past several years it has failed. In December it failed miserably. It produced about 74,000 new jobs. The economy needs about 250,000 new jobs per month, minimum.

So once again, Mr. President, you have announced you are tackling this problem head-on. This week you jabbered with a bunch of college presidents to boast about programs that link big companies to universities. With the college presidents you made a promise to "lay out specific steps we can take to help more workers earn the skills they need for today's jobs."

This is not new, sir. You have pushed such programs before. They failed to work. They are bull.

You now call for more unemployment benefits and an increase in the minimum wage. Both of these slow down new job creation. They do the very opposite of what you say you want.

You have announced you will meet again with a bunch of CEOs of big companies at the White House to talk about "commitments we're making to put more of the long-term unemployed back to work." Bring on the cameras and trumpets. Mr. President, these are some of the CEOs you put on a jobs commission last year. They were going to find ways to "create more new jobs".

With due respect, sir, this is bull.

Sir, you are like the farmer who has a barn full of cows and bulls. You keep increasing the feed for the bulls while you ignore the cows.

You want more milk from that barn full of cattle. But the milk does not increase. So you increase the feed for the bulls. You pamper them. You inject them with growth hormones. But the volume of milk does not go up. So again you enrich the feed for the bulls.

Mr. President, the bulls don't give the milk. The cows do!

Those college presidents don't have a clue about how new jobs are created. Their institutions live off government handouts and contributions. Those CEOs don't know how to create tons of new jobs. That is not what they do. In fact, they do the opposite. They earn bonuses when they trim jobs. They pride themselves on producing more sales with fewer workers. Or with cheaper workers than before. They have zero interest in creating new jobs, sir.

The cows, Mr. President, are small and mid-sized businesses. It is small and mid-sized businesses that traditionally have created millions of new jobs. They produce the milk. It is these businesses that have reduced their expansions. They have reduced their investments. They have curtailed their creation of new jobs.

And how do you respond? You kiss the hems of the CEOs of big business. You feed more to the bulls. Over five years you have ignored the cows. The small and mid-sized businesses. In other words, you have turned your back on the cows. You have shrunk their feed. You have fed more to the bulls. And you tell us your policies will create more milk.

Bull, Mr. President. After five years of failure with new jobs you now double up on your abysmal policies. Read a book or two about who creates new jobs in this country. It ain't the CEOs, Mr. President. It ain't the college presidents. Those are the bulls. The milk comes from the cows, sir.

Tom Morgan is a veteran columnist whose column appears weekly in the Observer-Dispatch. Contact him through his Web site, tomasinmorgan.com